Volume 8, Number 9 · May 18, 1967
Victoria Lives and Is in the Stacks
By Noel Annan
Coaching Days of England
edited by Paul Elek, edited by Elizabeth Elek, with a Commentary by Anthony Burgess
Time-Life Books, 144 pp., $32.95
The Victorians
by Joan Evans
Cambridge, 254 pp., $10.00
Victorian England: Portrait of an Age
by G.M. Young
Oxford, 228 pp., $1.50 (paper)
The Triumph of Time: A Study of the Victorian Concepts of Time, History, Progress, Decadence
by Jerome Buckley
Harvard, 187 pp., $4.50
Evolution & Society: A Study in Victorian Social Theory
by John W. Burrow
Cambridge, 295 pp., $8.50
In Victorian times a book was a book: a standard form of conveying whatever the author had in mind and, if the publisher so wished, he illustrated it. The publisher catered to something called the reading public. The reading public varied vastly in income, education, and intelligence, but it was assumed to be a unity. Today, as with the division of labor, the reading public has fragmented, and various kinds of books are produced for various groups of people. How, for instance, do we purvey history? In books written for scholars, in books written for the intelligent layman, in paperbacks for students and travelers, in countless new formats to satisfy different kinds of readers. We have even invented a form of book for those who can't read.
Review, 3440 words
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